@ Mutt
G'day! I have a lot of respect and appreciation for you, and your knowledge of all thing Saudi related. Perhaps we will have to agree to disagree on the value of learning to "walk" in a simple aircraft before attempting to "run" in a passenger jet full of passengers.
The reasons I support the traditional career progression paradigm are:
1. Learning everything one needs to know about a C172 is much easier than learning everything about an Airbus. Doing this properly sets a mental template in a pilot of every thing one should know about any particular aircraft before strapping in and taxiing out. V speeds, limitations, emergency procedures, etc. Since it is easier to learn this info in a simple aircraft, it is also much easier for an instructor to evaluate whether a student has in fact learned it. With a more complex aircraft, it seems to me easier for things to fall thru the cracks and be missed, and perhaps a lower standard of proficiency may be deemed acceptable, with the implicit excuse, "well, not to bad for a 300 hour pilot...".
2. I instructed Chinese cadets. Many of my former students are now flying left seat for Dragon Air, Xiamen Air, and other Chinese airlines that I don't think I could spell. I saw more than a few guys whose skills in Piper Warriors were marginal at best (not MY guys of course), but they tended to get pushed thru the program. Perhaps the reason for this was "How many Pipers do you see in China? These guys are going to 320s and 737s...". I would think twice before I booked anyone I care about on these airlines as a passenger.
3. I am a big fan of basic airmanship. Going out and learning to fly an aircraft well - even a C172 - should not be considered a big hardship for someone who supposedly likes to fly so much that they aspire to work as a pilot. Going out and flying a dozen various types of landings every once in a while - short field landings, simulated power-off landings from the downwind leg, cross-wind landings, repeatly trying to put the wheels right on a mark, etc. - really does a pilot good. I don't see a lot of room for that in tightly scheduled programs like the MPL. I do see plenty of pilots who could not execute a visual approach and landing to save their lives. CAVOK, wind calm, runway in sight, and these guys still want to fly a VOR-DME approach, with the arc! I'm like "Dude! Look! There's the runway. Just land on it!", but no.
4. Experience is what we get when things don't go quite as planned. There is no better way to get this experience than going out and operating in the real-world aviation environment as solo PIC. I can think of many such incidents in my own flying history - 2 engine failures due to sucked valves or failed head gaskets, diversions to weather, aborted take offs, manual gear extensions, electrical failures, icing issues, Go/No Go decisions, etc. All of this can give a pilot important experience in making decisions and using good judgement. I believe it is very valuable for a newbie pilot to have these experiences and make these decisions sitting in the left seat of a simpler aircraft. It can really give a pilot a reality check regarding their own limitations. It seems many of the 300 hour wonder pilots I have encountered have a very inflated idea of their own experience and abilities. Yes, they can take off, fly to the destination and land IF everything is going well. But add a busy airport, congested radio freqs, weather, etc. into the mix and things quickly start to go pear-shaped. Up the ante to an incapacitated (or incompetant) captain, autopilot or other failures, and weather, and baby, that plane is not coming home intact.
5. Considering the way wasta and promotions tend to go together in the Mid-East, it is not unusual for the clueless 300 hour copilot to become a clueless captain after a thousand or so hours. I recently worked with several such captains. One of them recently was returning to Riyadh from Hail, and flew directly into a large CB cell (which he could have just flown around) and hit so much turbulence he bounced a passenger off the ceiling of the cabin and knocked him out.
I was mostly flying with guys who were rejected by NAS and the other regional carriers, so maybe what you see in terms of pilot quality where you work is better than my own experience. But for those considering using money to circumvent experience and go right for a job, consider this: Why doesn't the FAA honor the MPL program?
Best regards to you Mutt, and thanks for your help to me in the past!